Inside The Tough Battle To Unionize A Korean Grocery For The First Time

Labor activity has surged in Los Angeles this year, with everyone from screenwriters to boba shop workers and school bus drivers racking up victories.

But it’s another story in Koreatown, where grocery store workers at the Hannam Chain supermarket have been locked in a year-long-plus battle with their powerful employer over unionization.

The supermarket’s owner, Kee Whan Ha, is one of Koreatown’s most politically-connected developers and civic leaders. Ha famously took up arms to defend the supermarket on Olympic Boulevard during the unrest of 1992.

Today he’s facing a coalition of employees — Korean and Latino immigrants who’ve overcome the language barriers among them to fight for better wages and workplace conditions that they say were particularly egregious during the pandemic.

“They don't care about us,” Hannam cashier Sun Ki Sim said of the company, which includes six locations. “They only care about the money.”

If Sim and other workers could have it their way, the Hannam Koreatown location could become the first Korean grocery in the country to unionize.

But the workers’ dream of a union anytime soon looks to be dimming.

A final vote is pending

Earlier this month, the National Labor Relations Board counted 65 votes in a union election. More employees voted against a union than for it — by a margin of almost 2 to 1. A final tally is pending, as both sides challenge ballots.

Union supporters claim Hannam ran an aggressive anti-union campaign. Ha did not respond to a request for an interview sent through his lawyer at Barnes & Thornburg, who also did not give comment for this story. A manager for the store declined comment, referring questions to the lawyer.

The L.A. office of the labor board is giving both parties until Wednesday to provide their positions on the challenges, according to an NLRB spokesperson.

Union supporters say they're not standing down

Union supporters at Hannam still hold out hope the final vote will go their way, but if it doesn’t, they’re not giving up on a union.

“Even though the progress is very, very slow, I have to keep here and then stand here,” Sim said.

Sun Ki Sim is a cashier at Hannam who supports unionization.

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Sim, who has worked at the store for four and a half years, said she realized workers needed a union during the pandemic when they were not given help with protective equipment or social distancing. As more co-workers caught COVID, Sim had a panic attack and called in sick. She said upon her return, a manager chastised her for missing work.

The message from management, Sim said, was “we have to protect the company. So you have to be here.”

Another employee, Antonia Gonzalez, said that over more than five years of working at Hannam, she would complain of sanitation problems such as a cockroach infestation in the kitchen where she worked. Management, she said, threatened to shut down the kitchen and eliminate jobs if health inspectors ever learned about the bugs.

Instead, the kitchen jobs were outsourced, and Hernandez said she was made a cashier six months ago.

How early momentum was dashed

Union organizers describe early momentum for the unionization effort, buoyed by support from labor-backing politicians like L.A. city council members Eunisses Hernandez and Hugo Soto-Martinez.

But any majority support was broken down by pressure tactics from Hannam and its lawyers over the last year, said José Roberto Hernández, president of the California Restaurant & Retail Workers Union, which has been organizing the Hannam workers.

“They just hire an anti-union law firm with anti-union dissuaders, so that they can start dividing the workforce, scaring some of the workers, promoting some of the other workers, bribing some of the other workers with $1 wage increase here and there,” Hernández said.

Hannam cashier Antonia Gonzalez said regardless of what the outcome of the union election is, she and other workers will keep advocating for worker rights.

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Both sides have been sparring vigorously over the last year which has protracted the union battle. The union election at Hannam actually took place Aug. 3 in a tent outside the store — nearly three months ago. But the labor board impounded the ballots, as it investigated the grocer’s charge that union organizers had used gift cards and pressure by supervisors to build support among workers.

The labor relations board dismissed the complaint, citing “insufficient evidence," and held the vote count earlier this month, during which 22 ballots were challenged.

Efforts to organize Korean BBQ and boba

Before hitting an impasse with Hannam, California Restaurant & Retail Workers Union, or CRRWU, had notched major victories at other high-profile businesses founded by Asian Americans.

In 2021, workers at the famed Genwa chain, which has three locations in L.A., voted to form a union in what is seen as a first in the country for Korean BBQ restaurants. A contract ratified last year provides overtime pay and retirement accounts to employees, the union said.

Last month, workers at six L.A. County locations of Boba Guys, based in San Francisco, won their bid to unionize in what is also believed to be a first among boba shops in the U.S.

A screenshot of the Genwa Korean BBQ location in Mid-Wilshire.

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For the last several years, CRRWU has been working with Southern California employees of the Korean air purifier manufacturer Coway.

Worker support for the union is high, organizers say, but they are running into strong resistance from the employer, which is represented by the same law firm that works with Hannam.

Hannam owner is a powerful voice in Koreatown

Union supporters at Hannam have a notoriously tough adversary in their employer, Kee Whan Ha.

During the civil unrest of 1992, Ha grew angry that the Korean-language broadcaster was not telling listeners to defend their businesses. He recounted to NPR in 2012 how he went to the radio station.

“So I know the owner of that Radio Korea, so I brought my handgun and I put it on the table. I told him that we established Koreatown,” Ha said.

As Koreatown was rebuilt, Ha, a UCLA-trained electrical engineer, went on to become one of its biggest developers and landlords. And he expanded his supermarket chain to five locations in Southern California and one in New Jersey, while becoming politically connected at City Hall.

“We know that we cannot survive ourself,” Ha said in the NPR interview. “We have to have a relationship with other communities, as well as the politics, all these things.”

Ha's profile grew as he led the Korean American Federation of Los Angeles and Los Angeles Korean Chamber of Commerce. In 2013, the City Council named an intersection in Koreatown after him: "Dr. Kee Whan Ha Square.”

Why the stakes are high

It would be no small thing if Ha’s store were the first Korean grocery in the country to be unionized.

“I think it will encourage other ethnic supermarkets to organize as well,” said Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Labor Center.

Wong said L.A. is a major hub for markets that cater to Latino and Asian communities.

“And yet their wages and working conditions are far inferior to those that are enjoyed by the unionized major chains, such as the Ralphs and Vons and Albertsons,” Wong said.

Hannam is not the first Koreatown grocery to face a unionization drive. Twenty years ago, the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance tried to organize the Assi market but was unsuccessful.

In Southern California’s world of ethnic supermarkets, only employees at El Super locations have collective bargaining agreements through representation by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.

Local 770 represents a majority of approximately 600 El Super workers, employed across seven stores. A spokesperson for the chapter said workers were able to secure fair wages and recognition of sick leave and seniority.

Hannam workers and their supporters protest owner Kee Whan Ha (in the blue tie) at the 2023 World Korean Business Convention held in Anaheim this month.

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Despite concerns of retaliation for their organizing, union supporters at Hannam have continued to confront Ha.

Earlier this month, the workers and their supporters went to the 2023 World Korean Business Convention in Anaheim to protest the company’s response to their unionization effort and to face Ha, who was the convention’s chair.

As Ha posed for group photos with other business leaders, Hannam Chain workers and their supporters lined up behind them and held up fliers with Ha’s face printed on them, demanding he meet with workers.

Cashier Sun Ki Sim said if she ever got to sit down with Ha, she would tell him that he “is not the only one who makes this business a success.”